1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mixing system control method, a mixing system control apparatus, and a mixing system control program, which are suitably used for a large-scale mixing system.
2. Prior Art
Recently, digital mixing systems have come into widespread use, especially in the field of professional-use sound equipment. In these systems, sound signals picked up by microphones are all converted into digital signals, which are mixed in a mixing engine constituted by a DSP array and so on. With large-scale digital mixing systems, the mixing console operated by a user and the mixing engine are often separated from each other.
For example, the mixing console is installed at the center of the audience area or in the mixing room which is separated from the audience area, while the engine is installed in the backstage area. This mixing console has a plurality of controls such as faders, all of which may be automatically driven by the CPU of the console. For example, when a scene change has taken place, the faders and other controls may be automatically set to the preset operational positions in accordance with the stage situations at the time. This automatic setting is called “scene recall.”
When the operation variable of the fader for example is changed due to a scene recall or an operator's manual operation, the information thereof is sent from the mixing console to the engine, upon which an algorithm or a computation parameter in the engine is determined accordingly. Meanwhile, the processing capacities required for digital mixing systems are various depending on the scales of concerts for example, so that it would be convenient if the processing capacities may be enhanced by combining two or more consoles and engines. In view of this, the technologies for enhancing the processing capacities by cascading two or more mixing systems are disclosed in Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application 2000-261391 and others.
When a scene recall operation is initiated in one of the cascaded mixing systems with scene recall linked throughout them, scene recall processing is performed in the initiative mixing system and a recall instruction is issued to the other mixing systems. The other mixing systems that have received the recall instruction perform scene recall processing. However, if any of these other systems is performing a top-priority processing operation of its own, such a mixing system cannot immediately perform the instructed recall processing. If this happens, there occurs a problem of a time lag in scene recall execution timing between the mixing systems concerned.
When a plurality of consoles or a plurality of engines are used in a combination, these consoles are operated by different operators. In such a situation, it may be desirable to automatically lower the volume level of monitoring when performing a talk with the operator of each console or between the operators. Such a capability has already been realized by prior-art mixing systems. However, no technologies are available by which the control state of volume level can be freely set for each of the operators in accordance with console installation conditions.
In the above-mentioned prior-art cascading technology, the final mixing result can be obtained only in the rearmost mixing system (cascade master). This configuration makes it impossible to obtain an independent mixing result in each of a plurality of cascaded mixing systems. Likewise, if cue signals in the cascaded mixing systems are mixed over a plurality of stages, the final cue signal can be obtained only in the rearmost mixing system (cascade master), so that it is also difficult to obtain an independent final cue signal in each of the cascaded systems.
The applicant has proposed a dual console system (Japanese patent application 2001-285981, not laid open), in which a pair of consoles are connected to one engine in order to improve the operability. According to this patent application, when an operation event occurs on one of the two consoles, the contents of the event are transmitted to the other console. Consequently, operation events are exchanged between the two consoles, thereby providing the operation data (or operation states) which are common to both consoles. However, if an operation event occurs such as a scene recall which involves large amounts of data to be transmitted at a time, a problem is caused that a time lag in the operation timing between the two consoles occurs due to the transmission delay of the data. On the other hand, if a communication path fast enough for transmitting the data between the two consoles without delay is arranged, the time lag in the operation timing is mitigated, but at the expense of an increased cost.
When a plurality of consoles or a plurality of engines are used in a combination, these consoles are operated by different operators. In such a situation, it is desirable for the operator of each console to monitor the signal systems without restriction and for the monitoring operations of all operators to be independent of each other. However, the prior-art mixing systems are not adapted to such a mode of operations, thereby presenting problems that it is difficult to monitor a plurality of systems, and the operation by one operator affects the monitoring by another operator, for example.